Don't Learn Safety by Accident!

Imagine you logging into your blog one day and find your blog has vanished without any trace. Horrifying isn’t it? It is worst nightmare any passionate blogger can have. When I saw Sunita’s post in DH, I realised how important my blog is to me. I just couldn’t bear the thought of losing it due to unforeseen error. I am the one who is used to backing up each and every file and project I am working on as I learnt it hard way as how important it is back up. Since the day I lost all my project work on the day of its submission during my semester exams I make it a point that each and every file is securely backed up. I can’t see any reason as why I should leave my blog vulnerable to all unforeseen accidents. Forgetting to backup your blog or website is not a big deal until you realise that you have lost all your posts, comments, pictures and there is no way you can restore them to their formal glory!!!

Picture from Here

Backing up your blog is very important for any blogger and there are few simple ways to keep your blog safe. I follow two methods to back up my blog.

First one is to simply backup my blog using online blog backup service via Blog Backup Online. This according to me is the best backup service available and that too FREE!!! You don’t need any software or coding/programming knowledge to back up your blog. All you need to do is sign-up and register your blog you want to backup and it will backup your blog daily! How cool is that :) One thing is to remember is it is free as long as long as you use 50 MB of storage space.

Pros:

• You don’t need to download any software and also you don’t need to be technical savvy.

• Your blog will be automatically backed up everyday. Initially when you register your blog it does Full Back up where all data to date will be backed up. Once the Full Backup is finished, it does daily Incremental Backup meaning it will look up for new posts you add and will back it up.

Cons:

• It can backup upto 50 MBs of data which is not that bad. But if your blog size exceeds that limit you may have to take professional service to back up your blog.

Second thing I do is export my blog contents to wordpress account. Here you will need to create a wordpress account. Once you have created an account with wordpress go to Manage->Import and click on Blogger. It will display all your blogger accounts and all you have to do is press magic button Import to import all your blogger posts & comments with pictures. By Importing your blog posts and comments from your Blogger account to Wordpress doesn't mean that you will lose all the data from Blogger account. If I have to say in simple words, it is same as you copying the data from your PC harddisk to external drive/storage or CD and having 2 copies of same data. Which in turn means you have two copies of all your posts both in Blogger and Wordpress account and whenever it's needed you simply have to export all the posts from Wordpress to Blogger account intact with all the comments and pictures. But remember you need to Import data on regular basis from Blogger account to wordpress in order to have an up-to-date copies.

Pros:

• You will have backup of all your posts, comments along with pictures which you just need to export to your blog when needed.

Cons:

• Unlike Blog Backup Online, wordpress account will not import the data automatically and you need to do it manually. It is not exactly a method for backing up your blog but it’s always better to have another set of your blog backup.

Also Read few other ways to backup your blog.
1. Blogger Backup from Blogger Help.
2. How to backup a Blogger blog by Alex.
3. Wordpress Backup by Mr.Byte.
4. Blogger Backup for Dummies by Peter Chen.


Image taken from Here

In case you don’t backup your blog and by mistake have deleted or lost your blog there are few basic thing I would suggest you do.

1. Don’t panic. Easier said than done, hun? I know I am being philosophical here but you won’t get your blog back by cursing yourself or banging your head to the wall. You need to take control of the situation and not the other way round. Be calm and do the following.
2. Before anyone takes your blog URL go and get it. It is possible that someone might take your blog URL (high chances if you are on top Technorati chart) and use it. It is difficult to retrieve your old URL and you may need to start from scratch. So don’t leave any chance. Re-register your blog URL as soon as possible.
3. Contact Blogger Support Team through here. There are high chances of them missing your mail. Keep mailing them till you get some human response instead of automated reply. Blogger will eventually restore all your blog posts along with pictures and comments but can’t say really when. For some it took few hours, for other some days and even month. So don’t lose your heart. You just need to be persistent and keep mailing Blogger Help till you get response from them.
4. You will probably have almost all your blog posts stored in your or your friend’s Google reader or in their Feedburner. And also major search engines like Google will have your most of your posts locally which are known as ‘Cached Copy’. Just clicking on Cached link you will be able to see your individual posts and retrieve them. So there is high chance of retrieving all your posts although it is little time consuming.
5. If you have set your blogger account to send you an e-mail when someone leaves a comment on your blog you can retrieve all your comments too. To set this option go to your blogger Setting->Comments. Type in your e-mail address on box which says ‘Comment Notification Email’. This enables you to collect all your comments as individual emails to your mailbox.
6. Same thing applies if you are moderating your comments.

As my Grandma always said “Precaution is better than cure”, why take chance and repent later? Make blog backups a habit and ‘Prepare and prevent, don't repair and repent’ :)

Happy Blogging and Backing up ;)

Cheers
Sia